Hands-On Review of AMD’s New X3 Tri Core

There are two ways to look at AMD’s new tri-core. The first: Why would I buy a tri core when I can get a quad core? The second (the one that AMD would prefer you use): Why buy a dual when I can get a tri?

That’s the fine line AMD is trying to walk with its tri-core 2.4GHz Phenom X3 8750 proc. It can’t fight Intel’s quads head on, but it’s hoping that people who are considering dual-core procs will see the value in having one more core.

Of course, that was all before Intel slashed prices on its quad-core procs. On April 20, Intel cut the prices of two of its elderly quad cores. The 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q6700’s price dropped from $530 to $266 when purchased in bulk. The real trouble for AMD, however, is the 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600, which took a 16 percent price cut to $224. Just two months ago, the chip was priced at $299. With prices for the Q6600 already dropping to $224, this budget quad core will likely be available for $200 in a few weeks.

With that in mind, we fired up AMD’s X3 on an Asus M3A32-MVP with 2GB of Dominator RAM at 1,066MHz data rates, a 150GB WD Raptor, Windows XP SP2, and a GeForce 9800GX2 GPU. For comparison, we populated a new 45nm Penryn Core 2 Quad Q9300 and a Core 2 Quad Q6600 in an EVGA nForce 790i Ultra motherboard with the same GeForce GX2, WD 150GB Raptor, and Windows XP. The nForce 790i Ultra board features DDR3. Some will argue that the inability to run DDR3 is not Intel’s fault—it’s AMD’s. There is simply no way to run DDR3 on AMD chips right now. And while we could have tested the Intel chips using DDR2, we felt that it wouldn’t be fair to the Intel chips. Instead, we represent the chips on the best platforms available. DDR3, while exotic at the intoxicating high speeds of 1,800MHz and 2,000MHz, is almost affordable at 1,333MHz.

The chip itself should be familiar to AMD fans. It’s a 2.4GHz CPU with the same cache sizes as AMD’s top gun, the 2.5GHz Phenom X4 9850. Each core in the Phenom line features its own 512KB of L2, and all three cores share 2MB of L3 cache. As a 50-series chip, it’s free of the TLB errata that the original Phenoms had. All retail versions of the X3 series will be free of the TLB bug that hurts performance. AMD, however, is selling OEM-only tri-cores that still have the bug.

So how does the tri core stack up? Basically, it’s a quad core with one core turned off. From a practical standpoint, that means it’ll perform right between quads and dual cores. In most games, which generally aren’t optimized for quad cores, it’ll run with the quads. In most encoding applications, including video editing and other quad-optimized applications, it’ll attain roughly 75 percent of the performance of a quad-core Phenom and will definitely be slower than any of Intel’s quads. In other words, it’s not a bad performer in the context of where it’s being wedged.

Price, rather than performance, will probably be the deciding factor for anyone considering an X3. And that’s where AMD has a problem. With Intel putting incredible pricing pressure on AMD these days, the prices for AMD’s processors are incredibly compressed, so it probably doesn’t make sense to buy a tri core. At least not the top-end CPU. AMD’s fastest CPU, the 2.5GHz Phenom X4 9850 costs $235. The new 2.4GHz X3 8705 costs $195. Even more confusing, the 2.2GHz Phenom X4 9550 quad core also costs $195.

Of course, the big question is: What will Intel do in the coming weeks? With its preemptive price cut on the 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600, the price of that chip at retail outlets drops literally every day we’ve checked this week. If the Q6600 pushes into the $190 range, the X3 doesn’t become competitive until you hit the 2.3GHz Phenom X3 8650 at $165.

This doesn’t factor in overclocking results, as everyone’s mileage will vary with overclocking. We can at least say that AMD’s 50 series B3 cores overclock fairly well. We pushed a 2.5GHz X4 9750 to 3GHz on air cooling, similar results should be expected from the X3s.

There’s also the issue of software compatibility. Fortunately, it’s likely a miniscule problem. However, it’s enough of an issue that AMD decided to inform benchtesters that certain test applications that don’t work correctly with tri cores. Some simply don’t work, while others don’t perform as expected because of sloppy coding that allows them to run on only one, two or four cores.

What should you buy? Ultimately, that’s up to you. If performance is king, you should avoid tri core and go straight to a quad. If you’re on the fence between a dual and a tri, we would take a tri-core Phenom over a dual-core Athlon 64 any day of the week, but up against an Intel Core 2 Duo, it gets a little trickier. We’ll visit that subject in a future story.

Comments

Now now.. you went to far when you stated that ATI video cards are faster compared to Nvidia. Whenever ATI posts a higher score than an Nvidia part Nvidia fixes any problems and speeds up is video card to outperform every competing ATI card.

Now I have noticed that Nvidia has been a little slow with driver updates lately. They have alot of new hardware they are writing drivers for and I heard that they are trying to integrate the PhysX software with the drivers to use any Nvidia GPU for PhysX physics accelleration.

So really ATI hasn't produced a video card that outperforms it's competing Nvidia part since the ATI 9700pro verses the Geforce 5800/5900 video cards. But I do hope that ATI and AMD stay alive and well to keep the competition up and the rate of new technology..

The CPU I'm using now is my first ever Intel chip. The first ATI product I have owned was the 32 meg All In Wonder. I paid 300 bucks for it and it turned out to be the biggest peice of crap I have ever bought for my computer. ATI's drivers are the worst thing I have ever seen, except for maybe the way Creative Labs does their thing with droppping older hardware support when a new OS comes out. But thats another gripe.

When AMD bought ATI (or vice versa), that's when I bought my first Intel. I do NOT like ATI and prolly never will. ATI will be AMDs downfall.

I will admit to owning an ATI product tho...an HD 650 tv card made by visiontek. My computer is in my bedroom and has been for more than 15 years. So laying in bed watching tv on my 20.1" wide screen isn't that bad of an experiance. I just didn't feel confident enough in the other less than popular brands to spend 80 to 120 bucks on them. At least with the ATI I know where to go to send hate emails when I get mad.

And what's up with that crappy crossfire concept? A "master/slave" set up that costs more for the master than the slave? Be for real peops. Espeacially when u can get 2 Nvidia cards that are identical and less expensive and do the same thing without another big a$$ cable to dink with. Yeah I know if you stick an ATI card next to an Nvidia card the ATI card is gonna out perform the NVidia card. But for a $100 price diff u can keep it since ur gonna have driver problems every 2 months.

You mean hold a rally to keep AMD alive? Don't bother. It's a publicly owned company. Just buy shares to help out.
In fact I believe stock share would be cheap right now. This time next year things will be different. AMD has teams of lawyers and analysts and market research firms working for them. They have financial experts and technical experts that are working hard at bringing AMD back to productivity.

AMD is in no danger of shutting it's doors.

AMD has seen worse times than these and survived. So has Intel, Nvidia and ATI.

They already have a line of products nearing release that will help. And if amd does release a 12core processor this year then I will buy one if I have to sell a kidney. I mean come on. It's 12 execution cores. That just makes me horny.

Just imagine with 12 cores how fast internet porn er I mean web content creation will be accelerated.

It'd be more fair to stack it up against the budget wolfdale pieces. In performance, not in price.... We should all go out and but an AMD chip, even fi we don't use it, maybe the influx of money will let AMD spew out a good chip.

Too bad you can't pair the Tri-Core Phenoms with Intel Extreme Graphics. Sounds like an evil marriage made in hell.
I'd bet the box says that it's made for Vista.
At least the AMD Quad is competitive though.